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Wednesday, April 4, 2012

As the budget debate ramps up for fiscal year 2013, officials from the U.S. Department of State are promoting priorities for global health, including for reproductive health. Below are excerpts from recent public statements made by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Rajiv Shah, and Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer on the critical importance of family planning:

Hillary Rodham Clinton, U.S. Secretary of StateIn response to Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) on the costs of cutting global family planning programs, during a February 28 Senate Appropriations Committee hearing:

The cost is financial. The cost is in women’s lives. The cost is to undermine what many of the very same opponents claim as their priority, namely to prevent abortions. We want to stay focused on improving maternal and child health and there is no doubt at all that family planning services are absolutely essential to improving both maternal and child health. Working through our government, with other governments, with NGOs [nongovernmental organizations], with expertise, capacity, proven track records, we have made a big difference in women’s health.

Global estimates, Senator, indicate that by helping women space births and avoid unintended pregnancy, family planning has the potential of preventing 25 % of the maternal and child deaths in the developing world.

Family planning is the best we way we have to prevent unintended pregnancies and abortion. I know that it is a very controversial issue but numerous studies have shown that the incidence of abortion decreases when women have access to contraception. Therefore, I strongly support what this administration is doing in trying to provide the means to improve the health of women and children around the world.

Dr. Rajiv Shah, Administrator, USAIDIn response to Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) on making family planning less controversial, during a March 6 hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

We know that our history of program support in family planning has been one of our most successful areas of work.

We have seen in country after country a common pattern that gets you to a place where you have a better demographic situation for development, and that is first, a significant reduction in child mortality. And we know when that happens, people and families invest more in kids, get them in school and it becomes a pathway out of poverty. And then it is generally followed by a long-term and more effective approach to family planning and reducing the total fertility rate in countries. And the combination of those things has been a major part of the development success story in nearly every success story we see around the world. It’s incredibly important.

We’ve seen in our own programs that effective birth spacing reduces maternal and child mortality by 25 percent and we think they are a relatively noncontroversial way to achieve that outcome, simply as part of having trained community health workers, the same people visiting homes making sure kids who are malnourished have access to protein and micronutrients, also engaging in conversations about just the facts related to the effectiveness of that approach.

Melanne Verveer, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s IssuesIn a March 15 interview with CNN:

Family planning is one of the best public health interventions that can be made. It makes such a difference in a woman’s life for her to be able to have the wherewithal—the family planning contraceptives available so that she can decide the size and the spacing of her children.

It is about her health. It is about her future. It is about the betterment of her family. And where it has become available in ways in which women want to utilize it, they know it is so important to the quality of life for them.So certainly in societies there are those who say, “Well, there's no place for this.” But I think we all know this a sound public health tool. It is one we support. It is part of the Global Health Initiative that the United States has been supporting.

It brings down the numbers of abortions around the world. And it is just unfathomable that women can't get the access that they need so that they can have healthier lives, healthier families, and be able to do a great deal more for their families, for their communities, and for themselves because they're deprived of it. So we need to be making every effort to make it more available.

Family planning is one of the best public health interventions that can be made. It makes such a difference in a woman’s life for her to be able to have the wherewithal—the family planning contraceptives available so that she can decide the size and the spacing of her children.It is about her health. It is about her future. It is about the betterment of her family. And where it has become available in ways in which women want to utilize it, they know it is so important to the quality of life for them.So certainly in societies there are those who say, “Well, there's no place for this.” But I think we all know this a sound public health tool. It is one we support. It is part of the Global Health Initiative that the United States has been supporting.It brings down the numbers of abortions around the world. And it is just unfathomable that women can't get the access that they need so that they can have healthier lives, healthier families, and be able to do a great deal more for their families, for their communities, and for themselves because they're deprived of it. So we need to be making every effort to make it more available.